Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
USA, Nov 9. - Watching a movie is not exactly a walk in the park for the brain: in fact, it activates 24 different circuits to be able to follow the presence of people, inanimate objects, dialogues or action sequences.
In addition, some circuits are activated to follow more complex or ambiguous scenes, where greater cognitive effort is required.
This was discovered by the study published in the journal Neuron and led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which mapped for the first time using magnetic resonance images what happens in the brain while watching movies such as "Inception", "The Social Network" and "Home Alone".
The researchers, led by Reza Rajimehr, analyzed complete brain scans obtained from 176 volunteers who watched short clips of the selected films and then applied Artificial Intelligence algorithms to identify the different brain networks involved.
The results revealed the involvement of 24 circuits associated with specific aspects: for example, recognition of faces and bodies, movement, places and landmarks, language, and interactions between humans and objects.
The data also show that when the content of the film becomes difficult to follow, areas of the brain responsible for so-called "executive control" take over.
These areas are those that allow planning actions, solving problems, and prioritizing the most important information.
In contrast, during simpler scenes, regions with specific functions predominate, such as language processing.
"Executive control areas are usually active in difficult tasks, when the cognitive load is high," says Rajimehr.
"It seems that in situations where there is a scene with an ambiguous meaning, greater cognitive effort is required, says the researcher, and therefore the brain switches to using more general control domains." (Text and Photo: Cubasí)
